A conventional printer includes a reciprocating carriage for holding print cartridges in respective receptacles. The carriage is typically scanned across the width of a media and ink is ejected from the print cartridges in a controlled manner to form a swath of an image during each scan. The height of the printed swath (as measured in the direction the media is advanced) is fixed for a particular printhead. In addition, a mechanism for feeding the media is used to incrementally advance the media through a print zone between scans.
When printing such that the media contains no borders, conventional printers typically fire ink out of the printhead nozzles slightly beyond the end of the media. This generally ensures that, there are no blank areas around the bottom of the media. This extra printing requires an ink collection system in the platen to absorb the ink so that it does not mark subsequent sheets of media.